Game Review – Legend of Heroes ~ Sen no Kiseki II (PS3/PS Vita)

Legend of Heroes is a pretty complex series, and this newest entry proves this more than ever! After all, with so many things to love and hate in a single title, it only comes to show how deep the franchise is!

Previously, on The Legend of Heroes:

The very first thing my homeroom teacher does is to open a trap door, sending me to a cave full of monsters. I was not too happy with that…There’s a blonde bitch in the same class who bitch-slaps the protagonist after he saved her life. This also didn’t made me happy…All members of the main class are as generic as they can get, which is sad!Every chapter starts with you walking around the school helping in trivial problems, which is boring.You can also watch some visual-novel events with your party members, but those are poorly written. Hence, boring! After that, you need to explore a dungeon that recycles the same assets and layouts over and over again for every chapter, and that’s also boring!Later, you fight against a practice robot-thing…boring!In every chapter, you go on a mission school trip to visit other cities, which is fun! And then, you need to help solving trivial problems again, which is boring!On the way there, you play “Blade” with your allies, which is a type of trump card game. Guess what? Boring!During the trip, you get to know a little more about your classmates, but since they are just one-dimensional stereotypes, you already knew everything there was to know about them, so: Boring!Eventually, something interesting happens at the end of the chapter, which is great! That is if you’re not sleeping after all that boringness.Further in the game, there’s a school festival. I have never seen something like this before! Hahaha!…Boring!Hey! This Crow dude is cool! Finally! A charismatic character!HOLY SHIT! GIANT ROBOTS!CROW IS A TRAITOR!! He killed Osborne and now he wants to destroy or peaceful school days! I LOVE YOU, CROW!!!The main cast is utterly defeated by Crow who is piloting his own Mecha and the protagonist has to run away from the battlefield like a bitch!! Did I already say how much I love this Crow guy?!The End….WHAT?!The first chapter in the “Sen no Kiseki” story-line was released last year on the Vita and PS3 and, as anyone can see, 90% of the game was godly awful! You could presume this could have been an attempt to emulate the huge success of the Persona series. Regardless, it was clear that the writers under Falcom didn’t know how to work with that theme.But, that’s ok! In the end, since it is part of a successful series of games, it sold fairly well. And there’s a saying about how “All’s Well That Ends Well”. So, if the cliffhanger is so promising, this means the sequel has to be better! But to ensure things would work out in the next game, the fan-base gave a lot of feedback. Thankfully, Nihon Falcom cares a lot about their fans’ opinions. Therefore, they took all those complains into account to fix many…MANY things in the sequel:

Some stuff that was fixed thanks to fan feedback:

The Story doesn’t take place at the school anymore. Instead, you will guide the heroes through many dangerous battles, as they get involved in an intriguing conflict.Not too far into the game, you get the ability to freely re-explore places from the previous title and visiting completely new places with your own airship!There’s less focus on the main allies from the previous game, since most of them were not very popular. In their place, popular NPCs from the previous game and many new characters get to join you!You are not forced to use a specific team anymore. With the exception of one or two characters during some chapters, you can freely choose your party members. Which lets you exclude your less favorite heroes from some main events.Rean actually gets to be less of a pussy in this one!Graphics were improved a bit. Animations are a lot better! Some clumsy sequences were fixed or deleted. There’re also new animations replacing recycled ones. Most cut-scenes use interactions with 3D models, as opposed to the previous game, where usually only a message would be displayed saying: “Character A does something to Character B”.The stories that go with each side-quests are way more interesting than before.This time, every party member use different clothes, which makes their visual much more unique and interesting than the first Sen no Kiseki.You’re not forced to go through a pallet-swap dungeon on each chapter, anymore. There’s an equivalent to this, but it’s optional and it’s only for a few chapters.

Some stuff that is still broken:

There’s still a lot of half-assed work in the graphics. Like the mouth animations, which didn’t cease from being just a poor texture animation.There’s less focus on the main allies from the previous game. So what if they were not popular? It doesn’t change the fact that they are the main cast of your game! If you were not able to make them likable, the shame is on you, Nihon Falcom!

Story

After the 1st chapter, the main heroes decide to not side with anyone at the current war, and they use all their resources and allies to become a 3rd power to fight between the two forces in order to protect the interests of both parties, and put a stop to senseless bloodshed.This concept has lots of potential, since war alone is already such a complex theme. You can write a very interesting story about it. However, this game tries to take it even further by adding this idea that the students from class VII are this “neutral force” composed with both commoners and nobles who see each other like family. Unfortunately, they fail to deliver this. Because of the weak character development in the 1st game, it’s hard to believe some of the characters would betray their families and pride just to help the protagonist.War isn’t portrayed in a realistic way here, because we can clearly see that nobles are the “evil side”, since they attack innocent people and use family member as hostages. Furthermore, the heroes are not really neutral, since they only join forces with the military, police and commoners, because they are the good guys who are only defending themselves. But, since they are “neutrals”, Rean keeps denying to be allies with the commoner-side, even though he defeats many generals and take over their bases.At some point, this plot feels like a story of the “seinen” genre, which would give a more mature look at a big conflict and its consequences, but what we got instead was a simplified idea of war, which focus more in the “shounen” aspect of the plot, with lots of battles in the name of justice, love and friendship.Although it gets weak at some areas at times, the main plot is actually quite good! There are many moments with interesting revelations and twists that ties this chapter with older titles (like Ao no Kiseki) or that makes building-up for future entries in the series.Sen no Kiseki can be considered as the weakest arc in the series, but you can still see the high quality in the writing which made this franchise so famous. However, there’s a point where everything crumbles! The final chapter ends with the perfect cliffhanger, it would’ve been the ideal moment to finish the game, but just like the film “A.I.”, it doesn’t finish there. Following a sequence of awful developments, the winter vacation ends and it’s back to the damn school again!AAAAAAH! SO BORING! You need to watch class VII studying for exams and helping with trivial stuff ALL OVER AGAIN! And when you think it’s over, there’s a very awkwardly placed final dungeon that has no reason to exist other than to give you an excuse to use all those guest characters once more. This final part is so convenient and sudden to the point it feels like something out of a fanfic!

Characters

If you’re not a big fan of the previous main cast, chances are you’re not going to enjoy this game that much. It could even be frustrating, since one of the main characters only gets development during a short battle that comes before a main event, while some characters don’t get development AT ALL!!During the journey, you get new support in the form of Tovar Randonneur – a seasoned Bracer, Elise Schwarzer – the little sister, Alfim Reise Arnor – the little princess.Angelica Rogner – the cool and beautiful senior student, Towa Herschel – The fake-loli president of the student council.Claire Rieveldt – a member of the military, and Sharon Kluger – the assassin maid.All characters who already had been briefly introduced in the first game. At first you get to play as them only for some chapters, but they all come back as fully playable and customizable characters in the final dungeon. Nevertheless, even though they are not playable for the whole adventure, those are the characters who usually have more development and who have more involvement in the main plot.

Gameplay

Nothing was changed from the previous battle system, which is great, since I love this system! There’s a new feature known as Over-rise, which is basically a toned down version of the Burst system from Ao no Kiseki. By activating Over-rise, only two characters get a few extra turns, but at least you can use it in any battle, as opposed to the Burst.This games has a bigger focus on side-quests and exploring. You get in control of a huge battleship and there’s a lot to do that is not listed in your list of side-quest. One of the best new features is that you can also recruit students from the same school as the heroes to have them work in the battleship with you.This is very similar to how you recruit the 108 stars of destiny in Suikoden. This new game flow is perfect for fans of traditional-RPGs, but if you love DateSims, you would probably like the first game a lot more, specially because the Galge elements are not as influent and constant as the previous title.

Graphics

As mentioned before, the overall visuals received a bit of upgrade in some areas, but it still uses most of the same assets from the 1st game. The new assets created for this game are really good. Costume designs, enemies, dungeons layouts, all those are excellent, but we also got giant robots battling each other, and it’s glorious! The designs and animations are really sharp and even better than the ones for human characters, with an impressive level of details in those giant metal monstrosities, which makes every battle with Valimar really epic, specially for those who love Super-Sentai stuff.There are many new attacks. The bad news is: Most the animations for those attacks are as ridiculous or dull as in the previous game, the good news is: There are some excepts!

Music

The music is still fantastic! Not quite as good as Ao no Kiseki, but it’s still pretty awesome! I like how they brought back some old tracks from Zero no Kiseki during the side-story in Crossbell, but it’s a shame they didn’t use the arranged versions from the “Evolution” remake.

Voices

Nakata George, Sugita Tomokazu, Sakurai Takahiro and many others talented voice actors working in this game. It would be perfect if those awesome voices could be heard more often in this game, but sadly, the budget for this game didn’t make possible for Nihon Falcom to make this fully voiced. There’s also many characters who are simply not voiced, and there are some events where only one or two characters have voice-over, usually it’s Rean who loses his voice, since he is the one who appears the most in the game, which means they would need to pay much more just for his seiyuu, and they don’t got the money for it.

Conclusion

The game finally ends with the cheesiest scene in all the series! It’s so silly that made me embarrassed! This leaves the game with 90% of a good story and 10% of the worst shit ever. Which means Sen no Kiseki 2 is the complete opposite of its predecessor. Which one is better? I can’t really answer that for everyone, but I definitely had much more fun with this one. And since there are still many more games to come, there’s still hope for a better future in the series. Maybe we will get Ao no Kiseki II someday…

-Voices
This was weird. They cut most dialogues events where some characters talked and others didn’t even Scarlett’s and Vulcan’s seiyuus got paid for more dialogues when they still had important events.

-Battles
I love the battles a lot. Some complained but I think they are still cool with the new link is good so far but my only complain is that with the huge cast they throwed away the double s.craft that was so cool in the previous titles it’s obvious because of the budget but would have been cool if the culmination of the link system were an special combo between Rean and someone at least. About Over-rise I believe it also give you high critical chances with physical attacks.
Robotos fight man I love mech so I loved these ones. They are not very rpg-ish if anythings is like a game were you guessed were to attack but man you have to think carefully your next moves, that was neat.

-Music
9.5/10 not better than Ao no Kiseki but like someone said once “there are not bad music with jdk Band…just least amazing tunes” and that’s it. Demon Castle dungeons and some opera themes were great and I think “Blue destination” was cleverly used in Crossbell lol

-Characters
The most boring part of the game. I was a way more interesed in all the guest characters + villains + antagonist and nothing more….I never felt so detached with main characters in a kiseki serie. I wanted to know more about Rean just because his robot and transformation together with his ravalry with Crow even if he still felt plain but the others? nah some events here and there but not even Ema or Class rep (her second name lol) who was suppose to be important ’cause Vita…didn’t felt important to me. I never wanted to speak with Alyssa and I just picked Laura, Sarah, Fie or sometimes Millium (Altine >>> Millium) just because some silly motive other than being interesed in their backgrouds or motive….now Tovar, Claire, Alfimi or Towa? now we are talking…even the maid was a way more interesting than her stupid Ojou-sama if both of them weren’t so cliched I would have picked her first ’cause legion is cool and all that. The guys? man where to start…Jusis and Machias should get a room togheter already. I never cared about the other two…but Crow…now he was a bro sadly he never joined again and that’s it. Lloyd and Rixia were like the best couples of mains I could have asked for…the contrast was big even for a short time but nostalgia was there.

Food for thought:
-The nobles side were silly that’s why they were the obvious evil and this make things easier for Ouroboros but even easier for a certain someone at the end who set everything from the start and also Rean was part of it. Joining a crusade against the “evil nobles” even if he deny helping commoners at the end of the story when he gets an special title for his deeds he supported the opposite party plan without know it. From a political point of view some of the silly parts of the conflicts made more sense as if were arranged to make a clear contrast between nobles and commoners since they both had political power one will lose it eventually, for rushing or being stupid, and the other gain more from its popularity with people also knowing the relationship between our new heroe and the leader *wink*

Well maybe there isn’t a deep meaning in most parts but I want to think otherwise just to strength the final twist and some events a little more

Well anyway long post was long. Good review. The game is a 8.5/10 to me and that’s not bad. Clearly I enjoyed the free exploration and the great storyline even with all the bad things said it you can feel how well the handled the writing or the pacing with some events. Always wanted to know more about something and never feeling like stop playing it neither.

I agree with you about everything…well, not about Sara, but this is not that important when compared with that great twist at the (not) final chapter! The story is so great that, even though I was already seeing that twist coming since the previous game, it was still exciting to see it all the same! That moment was so fantastic that I almost want to buy your theory about how the nobles were made into “cartoonish villains” on purpose. Sadly, this still feels too far-fetched to me. Too many elements that were out of their control. Nevertheless, interesting theory!
Yes! Millium is nothing compared to Altina’s lovely eyes and cute sleep-talking (in the end, who was calling her, anyway?).
Although I like Rixia, I really wanted Tio to appear! Tio is love!

Noel is love 4me, shor haired fembros are love, and probably she won’t make it since Rixia and Tio were the most popular in characters poll….and Alyssa was there too >___>

Rufus was the most interesting character among the nobles unlike his brother and the one who made sense the most since he had a hidden agenda. Now he has become someone that I really looking forward to fight…in that other city.

My Goddess! Tio is popular? It’s so rare when a character I love is popular with the majority! Now it makes sense why she is the only heroine to get a promotional art-work where she goes on a date with Lloyd. Hey! Remember when everyone got crazy with a mistranslation that made people think Eliot was her son? That would be awful, not because she wouldn’t be a virgin anymore, but because Eliot is not nearly as charismatic or interesting as her!

Alisa is a rich, blonde twin-tail, tsundere. Since there are many masochists in Japan, this archetype is really popular! Any character of this type becomes popular in Japanese media.

Rufus is much more interesting than his cocky little brother probably because he was not created together with other 10 characters in mind. The writers probably wanted to create a important and unique figure when they made Rufus, which is what they should have done with the rest of Class VII!

I’m replaying the whole game in nightmare because “why the fuck not?” so I will get there eventually. I want to play with Crow and Altina but Im more interesed in Vita, I mean it’s the first playable Pillar for god sake.

I’m a bit new to the Legend of Heroes series of games (the only ones that I played were the PSP ones, which I think are unrelated). I see both Sen no Kiseki I and II on my Japanese PSN, as well as Legend of Heroes First, Second, and Third Chapter, which takes place in the Liberl Kingdom. I don’t have a PSVita, so I cannot play Ao no Kiseki, unless that is also for PSP, but I just have a question, in oder to know what is going on in the story of Sen no Kiseki I and II, would you have needed to play the other games in the series or no? It kind of feels like I would be missing some things if I didn’t, but Sen no Kiseki has different characters, stories, and plots anyways, so maybe it wouldn’t matter if I was to pick up both Sen titles. Plus, they are newer games in the Legend of Heroes series and I hope they make more. I’m a really big fan of Nihon Falcom. I have all the YS games from the PC Engine as well, which are very great classic action RPG titles.

The current series in the Legend of Heroes franchise takes place in the same universe and has a complex continuity. Beginning with the Sora no Kiseki series, with 3 chapters (PC/PSP), then Zero no Kiseki & Ao no Kiseki (PSP/PS Vita), and finally, the most recent arc: Sen no Kiseki 1 & 2 (PS Vita/PS3). Each of those arcs can be played as a stand-alone game, but you need to play them from their 1st part, or else you won’t understand what’s going on(Sora no Kiseki starts with “First Chapter”, Zero no Kiseki comes before Ao no Kiseki, Sen no Kiseki 1 before Sen no Kiseki 2). However, if you played all previous titles, you will notice some extra details and references, since there are many events in each game that are connected with previous chapters, and some chapters take place at the same time. For example: Sen no Kiseki 2 happens in another country but at the same time as the climax of Ao no Kiseki, and some characters give comments about what is going on at Crossbell – the city of Ao no Kiseki).
I hope I could be of help!

Great Story ?
We didn’t play the same game then.
Having 5 seconds with one plot twist you could almost could see coming don’t save the game from being an absolute repetition of robot + being saved. The kiseki series is just dead.

For me, even twists that are predictable could be interesting if the circumstances behind them are well written, and I find Giliath Osborne’s schemes and conspiracies to be really intriguing. But like I said before: their attempts at turning Rean’s group into a “neutral” 3rd power during war is very poorly done and even silly at times. Thankfully, I could separate those aspects of the story, and I felt that the overall story as pleasant. Well, at least much better than the first one. You must remember that, different from you, I hate the first Sen no Kiseki with a passion! That’s why I wasn’t expecting much from the second one, in the first place. Just the mere fact that it wasn’t a school-setting anymore already did wonders for the game, in my opinion. But they also didn’t focus much on the characters from the previous game, and this was also a plus in my book, since I hated most of them and didn’t care about a few of them. Of course, this game couldn’t hope to compare to Ao no Kiseki Evolution, released at the same year. Ao Evo was still the best RPG of that year for me!

Though I just can’t take this Sen 2 game seriously as you see Uroboros completely ridiculous towards the end. And as some other people said, how can Rean be defeated by every person he meet but be “tougher” than Lloyd which 100000000 times stronger in any way.

I guess this new Robot thing is kinda disapointing. It was more interesting how it was done in Ao.

…let’s say I forget about the Sen plot which is the main problem when you think about it, I agree that everything that was NOT from Sen was good enough and Kiseki material. Butmy concern is more that I can’t see Falcom get back to god arcs and writing when I see the last 3 games they made (3 copy of the same game).

I mean it’s good to use the same graphics and a few systems, it’s perfectly normal. But most things got weaker. Only the battles are good (but FAR easier, which is not a +). Characters/script/scenes are terrible. The “Kizuna events” are an extremely bad idea that feels forced and make them write even worse dialogs to “know” the characters.

When you compare Fie and Randy, both are from the same kind of group, but there’s a monstruous hole between the quality of their background as well as their personality. And the worse is that Randy is kinda cliché. But a really well done one that feels different in the end.
And there’s my favorite character in the series, Łazy.

Now that you say it, I guess I didn’t like most characters in Sen that much too. I liked the spear user and Ema and that’s it. But even then they were nothing like the Ao cast.

There are people who just can’t consider Lloyd as a strong warrior and say he’s just smart, but weaker than everyone in his group. How odd, I kinda remember him defeating Arios MacLaine one on one while the rest of the party was busy fighting against Uroboros’ robot soldiers. I guess some fans just can’t accept he defeated an S class, because this would mean he’s at the same level as Estelle’s father. Regardless, when it comes to the image of a strong and experienced warrior, at least Lloyd is way more convincing than Rean, in my opinion.
Falcom rarely puts the name of their staff on the credits roll, and usually the credits for everything goes to “Falcom staff”, unless it’s an “outsider” they hired, like voice-actors and such. For that reason, we don’t know who most of the writers are, but I believe most of them already left the company, leaving only a basic structure for the main plot, such as “What is the Phantom plan” or “What happened with Osborne after Ao no Kiseki”, and now there’s a new team of writers following the basic idea, but giving a different “flavor” to attract new fans by using trends like Dating Sim elements and school setting. I hope I’m wrong about this and that the next games in the series turn out to be epic!

And I agree, Ao was the best Rpg of his year. I didn’t play the psp one, I went on the Evolution directly.
Dat last boss…… and ending.
And Sen should have a 3 ? : (
It better make it for the 2 others because if it doesn’t, it could join the FF13 trilogy for me.

Yeah! Much like you, I didn’t play Ao (or Zero, for that matter) in it’s PSP format, either. But I felt it was wroth the wait. The PS Vita is undoubtedly the definitive version.
I’m still consider “Sen” as a part of the “Kiseki” series, so I was actually hoping that the 3rd one went on a different direction, with a new protagonist and theme, just like the Third Chapter of Sora no Kiseki. If Falcom give us someone as cool as Kevin in Sen III, I promise to not complain anymore!

If only.
Let’s say we already know the character…
Who could it be…
I hope we don’t, because I can’t remember any I’d like as a hero.
And I would like a change of chara designer…
Enami Katsumi was god-like.

Who knows? Maybe Lloyd wasn’t playable in Sen II for nothing! Maybe he will come back as the main hero in the next one! …Although this possibility may also get its own share of problems…
Enami Katsumi is certainly awesome! The current “Falcom staff” is trying to mimic his style ever since Sen no Kiseki, but I think they’re still lacking in a bunch of areas. It’s not bad, but definitely not as good!

I can only speak for the first game but the problems many people have seem to occur in both but I honestly disagree with most people here, I love the main characters and have no issue with the writing. It is the definition of a slow burn and it works really well but I’ll just come here if I want to hear a bunch of people whine about non-existent problems

I think most people didn’t paid enough attention to know that Rean does not fights with full force all the time. Rean is not strong in his normal mode, but once he enters Oni mode, he is pretty much better than llyold in every department . Oh and he has valimar. So……..

Holy shit to the folks that said lyold is as strong as Estelle father, jesus. Just stop embarrassing yourself, he is nowhere close there. Did you folks even play Ao ?

THIS IS LLYOLD AND CO VS DIVINE WIND BLADE

I’m chinese and I play the chinese version, so I know my shit. Westerners please stop copy pasting from sites with synopsis, and learn some moonrunes or mandarin first.

And if OP or whichever retard thinks that L and gang was able to defeat arrianhord(one of the great pillar), consider killing yourself because arrianhord didnt even use an inch of her power. Western trails players sure are shallow when it comes to understanding

I got so bored in the story of Trails Cold Steel II that I kept fast forwarding most scenes starting from Act II *yawn*. Playing this game is so embarrassing with all those cheesy and “wanna-not be cliché” scenes. LOL the writers really did a poor job on this one compared to Sora no Kiseki.
I guess ToCS II can be a good game for young teenagers who are new to JRPGs and want to experience some good gaming. For me, the kiseki universe is ded.

“In a way”, I guess Falcon did a good job with this game, but from cold steal onward, the kiseki series begin to target a different public. It’s sad that it doesn’t appeal for people like us anymore, but Falcon is having more profit by appealing to a younger audience, so there’s no helping it. I guess we have to move on and look for another RPG series to love.

Exactly! Time to move on 🙂
Btw, did you play Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana? I hear people saying that the game can be described as a “Trails of Ys/ Ys no Kiseki” game with all the present NPCs and ton of dialogs in it. I hope it’s wrong and Ys is still the fast-paced game we all love.

I used to love Falcom works since their early games, but now I have mixed feelings with this direction they are taking including all the social bondings in their games (and Magical Alisa fanservice). -_-